This year marks twenty-five years at the forefront of global inkjet technology for Xaar, the world-leader in industrial inkjet printheads. Xaar began life in 1990 as four people in a small office on Cambridge Science Park. Their goal was to develop and commercialize the digital inkjet print technology arising out of work done by Cambridge Consultants.
Today the company employs over 600 people worldwide, based at three buildings on the Science Park, at state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in Huntingdon and Järfälla, Sweden, and in offices in Hong Kong, India and the U.S.
Over the last twenty-five years, Xaar has proved itself to be an inkjet innovator many times. The company’s Xaar 128 printhead transformed the wide format printing industry 20 years ago; even today, Xaar technology still drives approximately 75 percent of the wide format printers in use.
In 2007, Xaar launched its revolutionary Xaar 1001 that has since transformed the ceramic tile decoration industry, bringing many benefits to tile manufacturers all over the world, including reduced costs and a vastly expanded range of creative tile design effects.
More recently, Xaar expanded its focus into other significant marketing sectors, including direct-to-shape packaging printing and the hi-tech world of Additive Manufacturing, 3D printing and nanoimprint lithography, a process used to manufacture silicon wafers.
To mark its twenty-fifth anniversary Xaar is organizing a program of events during the summer and autumn.
In line with the company’s record of supporting local and national charities, it includes a number of company-wide charity challenges, starting with a twenty-six-strong Xaar team undertaking a sixty-mile London to Cambridge Bike Ride to raise over £2,000 for Breast Cancer Now, Other challenges planned are the Chariots of Fire relay race in September (for East Anglia Children’s Hospice) and October’s the Byte Night sleep-out in aid of Action for Children.
Richard Barham, Xaar’s Chief Customer Officer, believes building the celebrations around charity events says a lot about Xaar as a company. “We’re immensely proud of what we’ve achieved over the last twenty-five years, but we know we couldn’t have done it without the advantages that come with being in Cambridge—not only our people but also the superb high-technology support infrastructure that’s in place. By linking our anniversary celebration with support for these charities we are giving something back while also showing that we remain an energetic company with a strong drive to succeed.”
For more information about the charities supported through Xaar’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations see their Web sites:
Breast Cancer Now: http://breastcancernow.org
East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices: http://www.each.org.uk/
Action for Children: https://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/
